Estonia with love : 08/09/06

Having the constitution of a 900 pound weakling I managed to get horribly sea-sick on the Ferry to Estonia this morning, foolishly vacating my post on the upper deck in order to wander nonchalantly downstairs among the cool people, yes, the people who were eating greasy pizza, drinking warm beer and tilting their chairs back to watch TV sets bolted to the ceiling.


How I longed to be one of these, while quickly finding myself locked into a cubicle alongside a number of other unknown persons crying 'ruth'with gusto over our porcelain buses. That rather sad lament from Bohemian Rhapsody began drifting into and out of my consciousness.. I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all.. carry on.. carry on...

But eventually the whole horror ended, I sprang onto the peer and onto a city tour bus of Talinn, a very bedraggled kind of red double-decker which looked as if it might have been superannuated in 1952 by the London Bus Company. Of course as an Australian, nay a Queenslander, I think I can boast of having very well developed Dag Antennae, so I was enchanted by the tour, especially when the head-phoned tour stops went slightly out of sync with the physical presence of the bus. Our heads swivelled to the left as the muddiest lake in Estonia was pointed out (how like a dirt car park it looked), then to the right where a man invented a particular kind of potato in a special building (the one that seemed to have been replaced by a hundred and fifty year old tree). We even passed a huge advertisement which feature three blonde lasses peering winsomely over their shoulders while advertising something boldly known as SLOGGI. I tried so hard to get a picture, but the bus clattered remorsely past.


It was possible by listening carefully to observe a way in which history was being told by omission e.g. "on our left was once the car manufacturing company owned by Mr Behr and his family, who left Estonia in 1939". Did Mr Behr and his family go to the US? Or did they, to use Primo Levi's mordant turn of phrase "go up the chimney". Mostly the bus tour concerned itself with mud and potatoes. They were safer topics.

But I really loved what I saw, wandered about the Old Town, bought some Chinese Tatt from the Markets, visited a beautiful old Church (that was for you, Arvo), and prepared myself for the journey back to Helsinki. This time I resolved to stick with my failsafe anti-seasick method, stay on the upper deck, sea-spray and freezing winds nothwithstanding, fix my eyes to the horizon and to the occasional gull drifting over us in the updrafts and abandon myself to the elements. It worked a treat. I even ate some bread and cheese while sitting there, shivering in my woolly hat, and my Llama coat... but smiling..